Draußen vor der Tür

»A man returns from the war. One of those who come home and yet do not really come home, because there is no home left for them.«

He is tired, but he cannot sleep. He wants to die, but even death does not want him. In a postwar society yearning for a fresh start and to forget the past, the maimed body and shattered psyche of the war veteran Beckmann become a symptom of what has been banished into the unspeakable. How does one live in a society that wants nothing to do with darkness, shame, and guilt? In his search for warmth, he hopes to break through the great silence.

Wolfgang Borchert’s Draußen vor der Tür premiered on November 21, 1947—one day after his death—at the Hamburg Kammerspiele. The play became the cry of an entire generation: a radical indictment of war and of a society that was eager to return to everyday life far too quickly. Nearly eighty years later, director and set designer Ran Chai Bar-zvi rescues the play from the ruins of Hamburg and transposes it to the present day—into a modern office. Together with the ensemble, he explores the absurd and surreal dimensions of this eloquent drama.